


Birthday Hope

by NixxieFic



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-22 21:32:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7454632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NixxieFic/pseuds/NixxieFic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft sends a telegram to Inspector Lestrade of the Yard on his birthday. </p>
<p>Set in the TAB universe, but in 1887, long before Mycroft's ill advised bet with his younger brother as to gorging himself to death, so this Mycroft is not as gravid. However, this Mycroft is suitably rotund and delightfully plump.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birthday Hope

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this to my Tumblr on Rupert Graves' Birthday on 30th June 2016 & I thought I'd put it up here, too.

 

Mycroft Holmes was nervous. Trepidation filled him as he wrote out the telegraph form. His hand trembled just a touch as he pulled the bell for Wilder to come up and then send the telegram. His voice almost shook as he gave his orders to Wilder. Shook! Actually shook! Him, Mycroft Holmes. The man who all but ran the country and he was ill at ease over his plans for tonight.

Not uneasy that it would go wrong on his part, this was something he’d been fantasising over and then planning for all but seven years now, almost ever since his younger siblings first run-in with Inspector Lestrade of the Yard. But on the Inspector’s part… now that was another quantity entirely. And so, Mycroft had calculated how this night would pan out for not quite a year, going over and over every sentence of Lestrade’s file to be sure.

Working out the wording of the telegram took great thought, ‘My dearest’ he had written now twice before, in confidential epistles to the inspector in hopes of softening him up, and neither had been rebuffed. But in a telegram these days it was daring. Hence why he was sending Wilder and not a junior runner, and as a private message that would be sealed and not intercepted. Working out to the minute what time the Inspector would get to the strangers room. Working out how long it was since his divorce, his cheating wife had even manipulated Lestrade into taking on the blame during the proceedings even though her infidelities had been numerous and his non-existent. Working through the file on his university days and the early days in the force, the snippets of information gathered, the rumours that had been quashed as he worked his way higher up the ranks and the atmosphere in the country had changed for the worse. But Mycroft’s agents were nothing if not thorough. Mycroft was sure. Surer than he’d been of sending people on several hits… and that spoke volumes.

But still, his hands, his voice-box and the recesses of his mind betrayed him.

Hope, nevertheless… oh, hope he had in voluminous quantities. Hope had filled his days and imaginings for so long now. Hope of the glances toward him that Lestrade had hid, or so he’d thought. Hope of the changing tone of Lestrade’s voice towards him in their dealings. Hope in the clues so easy for a Holmes to see, that escaped the mental powers of most. Hope that the scraps of information of the policeman's younger wild days were not exaggerations, but truth.

And so, he wrote the form asking Lestrade to come to the strangers room this very night, the night of the anniversary of his birth. He watched as Wilder slipped silently from the room on his tasks, he stood and checked his pocket watch, counting down the minutes until he could get changed into the especial evening garb that he’d had made expressly for this very night. He stood and looked unseeing out of the window at the late afternoon sky as servants came and went to the room, setting up the dinning table and a comfy settee by the fire in hopes that the night progressed that far. He waited as everything was made ready for him as silently as apparitions.  
He waited and hoped and even smiled to himself, until he caught himself at it and quashed it in alarm of too much optimism.

He waited until his man appeared and they left the room together to his private apartment to get changed. Then back to the Strangers room with just enough time to get settled, but thankfully not enough time for nerves to manifest themselves again. He waited, optimism filling him and being pushed down in equal measure. And then… oh, then…

A familiar knock rattled the door.


End file.
